A girl and her pencils....Splodge the cat??

Hello and a very happy Friday to the world. I had really not intended to blog today, but as you know if you read my previous post I have been having issues with poor Splodge. So I thought I would like to tell you about it, because, hey! not enough artists discuss the fact that sometimes things don't quite work out as we want them to. I should have heeded my own lesson from the leopard. I guess I like to learn the hard way. I like detail and my reference photo was missing loads of detail and I am no good at making it up. So why did I still go with it? Because I liked his beautiful eyes. But they are not compensating for what I cannot see, all the lovely fur texture and the colors that I know should be in there. I am looking at my work and thinking, 'ugh!'. The eyes are good, although they still need more work. The rest I am working and working and I feel no happier. But I am telling you this because I want to say to everyone, we all have bad days, we all learn lessons the hard way sometimes. I know I will never get this picture as I want it to be. Am I going to bin it? No! I am going to finish it and teach myself to be far more choosy about my reference photos in future. Just because I like one aspect of a photo does not make it a good reference photo, not for my style of work anyway.

I have done another day's work on him since the shot above. The reason for this blog is to share my learning journey, so you get the bad as well as the good. This photo is actually three days of work. The strange thing is, this picture looks much better from a distance. I keep walking past and thinking, actually, it is not so bad. Then I take a closer look and go, 'blah!'. Worse still I don't know how to fix it! I will one day, but too late for little Splodge. So I suppose I am saying, it is okay. It is part of the journey. Dust myself off and move on! I hope whatever you are working on is going well for you....but if not, finish it and learn your lesson! And have a wonderful weekend wherever you are.

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